


Always By Your Side (Until I'm Not)

by KaelinaLovesLomaris



Series: Whumptober 2019 - FFXV [8]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Whump, Whumptober, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:41:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21753166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaelinaLovesLomaris/pseuds/KaelinaLovesLomaris
Summary: Noctis deals with the knowledge that his dad is dying.Part of my collection of Whumptober 2019 prompts.
Relationships: Noctis Lucis Caelum & Regis Lucis Caelum
Series: Whumptober 2019 - FFXV [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1505405
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Always By Your Side (Until I'm Not)

**Author's Note:**

> Day 14 Prompt: Tear-Stained
> 
> I'm really bad at titles, so the title is subject to change.

Noctis had faced his own mortality at a younger age than most people even think to contemplate it. He hadn’t necessarily come to terms with it, and he likely wouldn’t for years, but he had time to make peace with his own.

He was rapidly running out of time to make peace with his dad’s.

It was something that went unsaid, undiscussed. Everyone knew the Wall was draining Regis’s strength, his health, his very life. The Crystal was powering the Wall, but it was using Regis to do it, and a human body, even one infused with the Crystal’s magic, could not sustain that indefinitely.

Noctis knew his dad was dying. He was reminded with every tap of his dad’s cane, every creak of the golden monstrosity of a knee brace, every prematurely gray hair on his dad’s head. And every time Ignis or Gladio or anyone else brought up his responsibilities, he was reminded that his ascension would come on the heels of his dad’s death.

Noctis was intimately familiar with death, with its place in his life. He had watched people die for him too many times to count, watched people die because they tried to kill him, watched them die because the Empire wanted to expand its borders into Lucian territory and his grandfather had pulled back the Wall to only cover Insomnia.

It was selfish, but Noctis was glad. It hadn’t done much for King Mors, who Noctis only knew from the portraits and the few stories his dad was willing to share, but it had extended Regis’s life, and it would extend Noctis’s own. That he would take up the burden of sustaining the Wall was another thing no one talked about. His more mundane duties as king, yes, but nobody wanted to mention the behemoth in the room, least of all Noctis.

He knew his dad had sheltered him as a child far more than anyone in the government thought he should have. Noctis wasn’t entirely sure why, because his dad seemed perfectly capable of and willing to train him to follow in his footsteps now that he had started. His relatively _normal_ childhood and teen years were not usual for Lucian royalty, and he knew Regis had been chastised by his council for allowing it.

In many ways, Noctis appreciated it. Having the chance to be a child, to make friends, as difficult as that had been until Prompto came into his life, to live on his own away from much of the spotlight. But in other ways, it felt like a rejection, like Regis didn’t think he was capable of shouldering the burden of kingship.

He knew his dad loved him, every moment he had spent at Noctis’s side in Tenebrae as he screamed in agony from the Marilith’s wounds was proof of that. And he knew from Regis’s closest friends that he never smiled more than when he was with Noctis. But there was a distance between them, and Noctis didn’t know whose fault it was. If it was his, because he was drawing away and trying to insulate himself against the painful eventuality they were facing, or his dad’s for trying too hard to mask his failing health and guilt for putting his duty to his kingdom before his duty to his son.

Noctis didn’t blame his dad, he never had. He was angry, angry at the Empire and the Wall and the Crystal and the blasted Astrals who stood by and let their _blessed_ line of Lucis burn out and die for naught. But he was never angry at his dad, and he never could be, because despite it all, despite all the other things tugging at his attention, he always made time for Noctis when Noctis wanted it. Dropped everything and shifted his entire schedule to suit Noctis’s selfish whims. Noctis didn’t deserve him, and he knew he had come to this realization too late.

He didn’t know how to fix it. But every night that he fell asleep with tears staining his pillow, he knew that refusing to acknowledge his dad’s death would not make it come any slower. And he knew that when it came, he would never be ready.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on tumblr at [prince-noctisluciscaelum](https://prince-noctisluciscaelum.tumblr.com)!


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